THE REYKJAVIK SUMMIT : Gorbachev Renews Call for Arms Ban

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, arriving Friday for talks with President Reagan, called for decisive action to curb the nuclear arms race and to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2000.

As Gorbachev’s plane touched down at nearby Keflavik, a rainbow, the symbol of hope and happiness, brightened the gray skies overhead.

Gorbachev’s arrival during the ceremonial opening of the Althing, the ancient Icelandic Parliament, created a minor controversy over protocol because Iceland’s top leaders could not greet him at the airport. It did not appear to bother the Soviet leader, though.

Gorbachev said that both he and President Reagan realize that the fate of the world is caught up in their talks here.

“If that is so,” he said, “let’s agree that this already is quite something for the start of the meeting.”

Blustery Weather

Ironically, the airport at Keflavik is a North Atlantic Treaty Organization base manned by U.S. troops, and Soviet propaganda has often denounced such bases as a threat to Soviet security.

Gorbachev arrived in raw, blustery weather that forced him to hold on to his gray fedora with both hands as he stepped down from his plane, an Ilyushin 62M. As he spoke, however, the arc of a rainbow appeared from horizon to horizon, adding a touch of color to the gray afternoon.

“The time has come,” he said, “for serious, decisive action . . . by the Soviet Union and the United States of America. We are prepared to seek solutions to the most critical problems that worry people, and most of all those solutions that would remove the threat of nuclear war, which would allow us to get down to business on disarmament questions, to reach the goals we have placed before ourselves, which call upon the world community to liquidate nuclear weapons before the end of the century.”

It was Gorbachev who proposed the Reykjavik talks, and Reagan accepted despite U.S. reluctance to meet during the campaign for midterm elections in the United States.

Top Officials Absent

Soviet officials have said they want to see whether the two leaders can agree on ways to spur progress toward the reduction of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Also at issue is whether Gorbachev will visit the United States this year for a formal summit, a meeting that was agreed to at his first summit meeting last November in Geneva.

Iceland’s president, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, and Prime Minister Steingrimur Hermannsson were not on hand for the brief welcoming ceremony for Gorbachev, although they greeted Reagan on his arrival Thursday night. Iceland’s two top officials were at the meeting of the Althing, which was founded in the 10th Century and is known as the oldest Parliament in Europe.

Hermannsson said the Soviet Embassy had been advised that the president and prime minister would be able to receive Gorbachev at any time except between the hours of noon and 4 p.m. Gorbachev’s plane touched down at 1:10 p.m., and he was welcomed by Foreign Minister Matthias A. Mathiesen.

“The problem,” Hermannsson told reporters, “was due to some misunderstanding.”

He said the opening of Parliament could not be changed for Gorbachev, adding, “The Althing comes first in Iceland.”

Makes Protocol Visit

Gorbachev’s timing was criticized by Richard N. Perle, a U.S. assistant secretary of defense, who said it showed a lack of courtesy to the host government.

If Reagan “had arrived over the objections of the Icelandic government, we would have been excoriated,” Perle told reporters. Gorbachev later paid a protocol visit to President Vigdis, who, like everyone else in Iceland, is known by her first name, and so did Reagan.

Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, accompanied him on the flight from Moscow and will be the guest here of the prime minister’s wife. First Lady Nancy Reagan remained in Washington.

Also in the Soviet delegation are Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze and Communist Party secretaries Anatoly Dobrynin and Alexander Yakovlev.

At the airport, Gorbachev was ushered into a black Zil limousine that had been flown out from Moscow and was driven through a bleak, treeless landscape to Reykjavik, 45 minutes away.